Chapter 34

	We are embarrassed with second thoughts … we are lined with eyes; we see with our feet.
	RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Jimmy was feeling testy. His expense account was worrying him, and the nationwide search for Teddy Staples was going badly. No picture of Teddy had turned up anywhere. The official description called for an itinerant stonemason about five feet eight inches tall, weight one hundred and forty pounds, brown hair, bad cough, peculiar-looking, poorly dressed. Across the broad face of the land the police had turned up plenty of five-foot-eight-inch, one-hundred-and-forty pound, brown-haired, peculiar-looking derelicts who had such atrocious health habits that they had coughs; but only a few of these were itinerant stonemasons. Jimmy had been called up three times in the middle of the night by excited members of far-flung police departments. “He denies it, of course,” the voice would squeak, “but it’s Staples, all right.”

Twice Jimmy had turned them off with a suggestion given him by the Audubon Society. “Just one thing more,” he would say sleepily. “Just mention sort of casually that you saw an evening grosbeak pulling up a worm in your back yard. If he disagrees with you, call me back. You heard me, an evening grosbeak. That’s G, R, O …”

That had got rid of two of the suspects. But the third five-foot-eight-inch skinny itinerant stonemason with a bad cough had turned out to be a birdwatcher, too, and, glory be, he had boggled at the worm-eating grosbeak! “Hang on to him,” shouted Jimmy over the long-distance line, “I’ll be right there.” There had been a thousand miles away in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and to Jimmy’s intense chagrin the man under suspicion had turned out to be a deacon in the Baptist church and the father of seven daughters.

This particular wild-goose chase had cost $172.53, and it looked terrible, really terrible on the tally sheet.

The next afternoon Homer Kelly snatched Mary out of her library early and marched her along the street to the little brick temple with the putty-colored columns that faced down Walden Street. It had once been a bank, but now it provided office space for insurance men and lawyers. Among the lawyers were Philip Goss and his partner George Jarvis.

“The heck with Teddy,” said Homer. “I’m going to get back on the main track. Who was it the Boy Scout thought he saw a split second after the murder? One of the Goss boys. It’s about time I started chivvying them around.”

Philip’s small office might have been on Beacon Street. There was a Turkish rug on the floor and the bookshelves were filled with old volumes in calf bindings. The roll-top desk was a piece of pleasant affectation. Philip was smoothly at their service. So was George Jarvis, who appeared out of nowhere and sat quietly in the background.

Homer wanted to know what it had been like to grow up in the Goss household. “Is it really true that your father dealt more harshly with Charley than he did with you?”

“My father’s attitude toward Charley has always troubled me. My earliest memories are of shielding Charley from my father’s displeasure.”

“Why? Why was your father so hard on Charley?”

“I wish I knew. I think it was a tendency he had to see things only in black and white. Like in politics—everyone in the Democratic Party was assumed to be a knave or a cutthroat. If there were two sides to anything, one was dead wrong and one was right. He had two sons. One was good and one was bad. The same with his daughters. Of the two sons, I was the lucky one. I was the heir to the throne, the white hope, the serious student, the one who had his little nose pointed at Harvard from the beginning. Charley must therefore be the opposite of me. He was supposed to be unreliable, dreamy, wild. It’s my personal belief that Charley isn’t really so different from me at all, but he just hasn’t been let alone, the way I have, to do what came naturally. He had to be made to fit this square hole they’d provided for him. So he was the one who always landed in the way-out progressive school, where you messed around with fingerpaint and got rid of your aggressions with drama therapy or some damn thing.”

“But isn’t it true that Charley has turned out to be a very different kind of person?”

Philip turned away to the window that looked down on the T-shaped crossing of Walden and Main. Patrolman Bob Loftus was standing in the middle of the crossing beckoning a pair of old ladies across the street. Who was that weird-looking character standing in front of Richardson’s Drug Store, looking this way? Philip turned away from the window abruptly and glanced at Mary. He had seen that fellow with her. Was he waiting for Mary to come out? What right did he have to——? After all, some day Mary was going to be Philip’s girl——

“You were saying …?” said Homer.

Philip struggled to remember the question. “Well—as the twig is bent, so grows the tree, I suppose.”

“So they say. Well. Let’s go into this mutual-confession pact you boys had with each other. When did you start doing that?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t a pact. It was just something we did, without ever thinking about it, as long ago as I can remember.”

“Why didn’t you carry through on it this time?”

Philip flushed. George Jarvis made a demurring noise.

“Well, forget it,” said Homer. “Tell me this. What was Charley’s attitude toward you throughout all the years you were growing up? Did he show any natural jealousy toward you because you were his father’s favorite?”

“Yes, I guess he did. How could he have helped it?”

“And you had nothing against your father but his unfair treatment of your brother?”

Philip hesitated. George Jarvis answered for him. “You told me you had nothing beyond that.”

“What about your mother? Did she show the same kind of partisanship?”

“Mother? Oh, she wasn’t ever really ‘there.’ She lived in some sort of world of her own …”

She wasn’t ever really there … That was it. Yes, that was just the way she had always seemed to Mary. Just a set of formal motions and gestures, with no one really inside. When you knock, said Henry, no one is at home …

Homer spoke softly. “Do you think Charley murdered your father?”

Philip looked wretched. His voice rose in pitch until it was almost a whine. “What else am I to think, for God’s sake?” He collected himself then, and dropped his eyes. His question about Charley’s prospects seemed mere formal politeness. Homer answered noncommitally, which was the way he felt.

Out on the Milldam again, Homer caught sight of Roland Granville-Galsworthy, and he took a firm grasp of Mary’s arm. “It’s almost five o’clock,” he said. “I’ll drive you home, and then you can repay me for my kindness by giving me a drink. Do the Hands have any gin? I’d better pick some up at my place. By rights I ought to bring some glasses, too. I don’t trust the sanitary level you people put up with out there.”

Half an hour later there was a cold pitcher on the round oak table under the Angelus, and Mary, Homer and Gwen were listening to old Mrs. Hand talk about her great-uncle George who had written “Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys.” The pitcher was almost empty when Tom stuck his head in the door and hollered in, “Who left six bushels of apples right where I’d fall over them in the cider shed? Where in hell did they come from anyhow?” He glared at Mary, who shook her head and said, “Not me.” Then he stalked across the room and yelled at his wife. “I darn near busted my head open. Did you put those apples out there?”

“No, dear,” said Gwen. “Why don’t you use them to run off some cider? We’re all out.”

“Cider!” Tom strode to the door and went out and slammed it. Then he opened it again and marched back in. “As if I didn’t have enough to do, with all those trees to spray every time I turn around and fifty acres to plant and harrow and my machinery breaking down and those golblasted committee meetings and kids that don’t do their chores and on top of everything I woke up in the night with the goldarnedest charleyhorse you ever saw. All we need this year is a real whooperdo of a hurricane. That’s all we need. Besides, those apples are tired old winter-stored Macs. And nobody never made cider with them kind of apples.”

“Nohow.” Mary was sympathetic.

So was Homer. “The time for makin’ cider is in cider-makin’ time.”

Tom was mollified. “Sorry if I shouted kind of loud,” he mumbled and went outside again.

“Sorehead,” said Gwen.

Grandmaw shook her head. “He always was an old fuss-budget, from a child.”